Quotations

06 October 2013

"I think it's irresponsible of the president and his men to even talk about default. There's no reason for us to default. We bring in $250 billion in taxes every month. Our interest payment is $20 billion. Tell me why we would ever default. We have legislation called the Full Faith and Credit Act, and it tells the president you must pay the interest on the debt. So this is a game."

Yeah, it's a "game" alright, that should be called "Dismantling Democracy".

And as to anyone being irresponsible, I'd have to say that would be the Confederate gang in Congress. Because what is ignoring a duly legislated and enacted law of the land in favor of your own flavor/minority viewpoint? Traitorous? Or merely irresponsible?

01 October 2013

People will be viewing things a whole lot differently by November 2014. That's not to suggest that a second Civil War won't break out prior to that election.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa):

“Since they can't get their way," Harkin said, "they're going to create this confusion and discourse and hope that the public will be so mixed up in who is to blame for this, that they'll blame both sides.

It's dangerous. It's very dangerous. I believe, Mr. President, we are at one of the most dangerous points in our history right now. Every bit as dangerous as the break-up of the Union before the Civil War.”

25 January 2013

Referring to the President Obama’s inaugural address, Speaker of the House John Boehner, as quoted by The Hill:

“Given what we heard yesterday about the president’s vision for his second term, it’s pretty clear to me that he knows he can’t do any of that as long as the House is controlled by Republicans. So we’re expecting over the next 22 months to be the focus of this administration as they attempt to annihilate the Republican Party.

And let me just tell you, I do believe that is their goal — to just shove us into the dustbin of history.”

No, Mr. Boehner, it would be very difficult to miss the fact that you and your House full of Republican idiots reprobates are doing an awesome job of annihilating your party all on your very own.

24 January 2013

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) made a fool out of himself during a nationally televised public hearing when he asked Hillary Clinton about a covert CIA operation that was actually non-existent:

“It’s been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and that they may have weapons and what I’d like to know is the annex that was close by, were they involved with procuring, buying, selling, obtaining weapons and were any of these weapons being transferred to other countries, any countries, Turkey included?”

Watch:

Clinton clearly doesn’t know what the hell Paul is talking about, nor should she know, since Paul’s “news reports” are also non-existent. He actually got the information from the website of conspiracy theorist/right wing whackaloon, Alex Jones, who published the ‘story’ yesterday morning. Tell me again why anyone would vote for this idiot?

23 January 2013

During a conversation with a reporter from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga) claimed that President Obama upholds the “Soviet Constitution”, emphasis mine:

“The Constitution I uphold and defend is the one I carry in my pocket all the time, the U.S. Constitution. I don’t know what Constitution that other members of Congress uphold, but it’s not this one. I think the only Constitution that Barack Obama upholds is the Soviet constitution, not this one. He has no concept of this one, though he claimed to be a constitutional lawyer.”

Is it really possible that Rep. Broun is unaware that there is no “Soviet constitution”, that the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991? We truly do elect incompetent idiots.

“I've got news for the president: Absolutes do exist. Words do have specific meaning in language and in law. It's the basis of all civilization... Without those absolutes, without those protections, democracy decays into nothing more than two wolves and one lamb voting on, well, who to eat for lunch.”

22 January 2013

During his second inaugural address, President Barack Obama touched on a problem which continues to plague us, income inequality:

“[….] we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship. We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.”

According to economist Joseph Stiglitz, income inequality is preventing us from achieving a more robust recovery:

There are four major reasons inequality is squelching our recovery. The most immediate is that our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically driven our economic growth. While the top 1 percent of income earners took home 93 percent of the growth in incomes in 2010, the households in the middle — who are most likely to spend their incomes rather than save them and who are, in a sense, the true job creators — have lower household incomes, adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1996. The growth in the decade before the crisis was unsustainable — it was reliant on the bottom 80 percent consuming about 110 percent of their income.

Second, the hollowing out of the middle class since the 1970s, a phenomenon interrupted only briefly in the 1990s, means that they are unable to invest in their future, by educating themselves and their children and by starting or improving businesses. Continue. reading….

18 January 2013

During a discussion of Obama’s executive actions on gun control, Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough warned his party to tread carefully where gun control is concerned:

“My Republican Party better tread very lightly. They’d better be very careful. They have wandered in and followed the NRA, whose (sic) made some horrible PR mistakes over the past month. Republicans better be careful and think twice before they make their next move.”

17 January 2013

During an appearance on Morning Joe, (former White House press secretary) Robert Gibbs made a case for activating ‘Obama for America’ to fight the gun control wars:

“The NRA is continually trumpeting they increased their membership by 'x' amount in this month. The president has the most exciting campaign apparatus ever built. It's time to turn that loose. It's time to turn that loose for something more than just an election. If the NRA's got a list, then Obama for America has a bigger list and it is time to get activated again.”

16 January 2013

On Monday, House Minority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) talked to reporters about Speaker John Boehner and what action the Republican House is likely to take on the debt ceiling:

“Speaker Boehner has made it very clear he thinks defaulting on the debt would have very detrimental consequences, yet he continues to have members to talk about it as an option for negotiations.”

On Monday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner made it clear that Congress must act to avoid default, which could occur as early as mid-February:

In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other key leaders in the House and Senate, Geithner said that the Treasury Department is already taking "extraordinary measures" to fulfill the nation's financial obligations.

However, Geithner warned those steps would run out sometime between mid-February and early March, with a more precise estimate to be issued later.

"Any estimate, however, will be subject to a significant amount of uncertainty because we are entering the tax filing season, when the amounts and timing of tax payments and refunds are unpredictable," Geithner said.

He added, "For this reason, Congress should act as early as possible to extend normal borrowing authority in order to avoid the risk of default and any interruption in payments."

If the debt ceiling is not increased, Geithner said that the country would be forced to try to pay its bills only with the cash it has on hand on any given day, warning of dire consequences if the government is forced to go that route.

"The U.S. government makes approximately 80 million separate payments per month," Geithner said. "These include payments for Social Security; Supplemental Security Income; Medicare; Medicaid; national security needs, including military salaries, military retirement, veterans' benefits, and defense contractors; income tax refunds; federal employee salaries and retirement; law enforcement and operation of the justice system; unemployment insurance; disaster relief; goods and services sold to the government under contracts with small and large businesses; and many others."

He added, "If Congress does not act to extend borrowing authority, all of these payments would be at risk. This would impose severe economic hardship on millions of individuals and businesses across the country."

15 January 2013

During a press conference on Monday, President Obama rejected the notion of minting a platinum coin and the possibility of invoking the 14th Amendment, referring to these ideas as “magic tricks” and “loopholes”. He also explained the debt ceiling process, as well as the constitutional roles of the president, and the Congress in the process:

“And there are no magic tricks here. There are no loopholes. There are no easy outs. This is a matter of congress authorizes spending. They order me to spend. They tell me you need to fund our defense department at such an such a level. You need to send out social security checks. You need to make sure that you’re paying to care for our veterans. They lay all this out for me, because they have the spending power. And so I am required by law to go ahead and pay these bills. Separately, they also have to authorize a raising of the debt ceiling in order to make sure those bills are paid.

So what congress can’t do is tell me to spend X and then say we’re not going to give you the authority to go ahead and pay the bills.”

14 January 2013

On Meet The Press yesterday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell (R), called out the Republican Party for their racial intolerance:

“There’s also a dark — a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party. What do I mean by that? I mean by that that they still sort of look down on minorities. How can I evidence that?

When I see a former governor say that the President is “shuckin’ and jivin’,” that’s racial era slave term. When I see another former governor after the president’s first debate where he didn’t do very well, says that the president was lazy. He didn’t say he was slow. He was tired. He didn’t do well. He said he was lazy. Now, it may not mean anything to most Americans, but to those of us who are African Americans, the second word is shiftless and then there’s a third word that goes along with that. The birther, the whole birther movement. Why do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the party?”

Powell was speaking of Sarah Palin and former Romney surrogate, John Sununu, when he referred to “former governor(s)”.

Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in December, the NRA and pro-gun advocates have tried to argue that gun owners are the true victims. Comparisons of President Obama to the totalitarian regimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Chavez are flying around the conservative blogosphere. Nugent, a reliable conspiracy theorist, is actually more moderate to advocate peaceful resistance and faith in law enforcement. In comparison, former NRA president Marion Hammer recently urged armed insurrection against the Obama administration, which she claimed was preparing to take away guns to “control the masses.”

Realistically, as Media Matters notes, any executive order would likely focus on background checks or existing regulations.

13 December 2012

On the House floor yesterday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) ripped into Tea Party Caucus member Pete Sessions (R-Tx) over middle class tax cuts:

“Do I detect your smirk to mean that you don’t think Republicans will vote for middle income tax cuts, Mr. Sessions, should I take it to mean that you will continue to hold middle income tax cuts hostage, giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country?

The unfairness of it is appalling, the fact that it increases the deficit is disgraceful, and that it does not create jobs is a big mistake for us to make.”

12 December 2012

ABC News: “As the clock ticks toward a tax hike on all Americans in 20 days, President Obama predicted Republicans would join Democrats to extend current rates for 98 percent of earners before the end of the year.”:

03 December 2012

“What [Obama] proposed this week was a classic bait and switch on the American people—a tax increase double the size of what he campaigned on, billions of dollars in new stimulus spending and an unlimited, unchecked authority to borrow from the Chinese.

Maybe I missed it but I don’t recall him asking for any of that during the presidential campaign. These ideas are so radical that they have already been rejected on a bipartisan basis by Congress.”

Watch:

As is the absolute normal in these times, if it’s a Republican talking, it spews pure nonsense. Think Progress notes, emphasis mine:

Obama’s proposal — which includes $1.6 trillion in increased taxes on the rich over the next decade, $400 billion in savings in Medicare and other social programs, $50 billion in stimulus spending to begin next year, and an end to current debt ceiling rules — is not new or radical: it reflects the very same same policies Obama advanced for years and promoted extensively on the campaign trail.

Republicans are feigning shock that Obama is proposing to implement the very same policies that Americans voted for in November, as they seek to define his second term agenda and bolster their own negotiating position. Meanwhile, they have yet to offer their own detailed proposal to avert the cliff.

29 November 2012

During his first cabinet meeting since re-election, President Obama struck back at the Republican senators who have been on a witch hunt as they attempt to derail Ambassador Susan Rice who is believed to be Obama’s top choice for Secretary of State:

“Susan Rice is extraordinary. I couldn't be prouder of the job she's done.”

The cabinet applauded at the president’s statement of support for Rice.

“The personal attacks against Ambassador Rice by certain Republican senators have been outrageous and utterly unmoored from facts and reality. I am shocked that senators would continue these attacks even when the evidence – including disclosures from the intelligence community about the information she presented – have made it clear that the allegations against Ambassador Rice are baseless, and that she has done absolutely nothing wrong.

Ambassador Rice’s service as United States Ambassador to the United Nations has been impeccable. She has answered all questions raised in relation to the Benghazi attacks completely and repeatedly. The Senate committees of jurisdiction are in the midst of examining the events leading up to the Benghazi attacks, and I agree with those – including the ranking Republican members of both the Intelligence and Homeland Security committees – who have said we should let the committees do their work. There should be no place for such blatant partisanship in oversight of our nation’s intelligence community.

The election is over. It is time to drop these partisan political games, and focus our attention on the real challenges facing us as a nation.”

Really. These people need to get a grip on their partisan leanings and do the jobs they are being paid by taxpayers to do instead of carrying out vendettas based on completely unfounded allegations. Idiots.

26 November 2012

“Additionally, we need Congress, right now, to enact a minimum tax on high incomes. I would suggest 30 percent of taxable income between $1 million and $10 million, and 35 percent on amounts above that. A plain and simple rule like that will block the efforts of lobbyists, lawyers and contribution-hungry legislators to keep the ultrarich paying rates well below those incurred by people with income just a tiny fraction of ours. Only a minimum tax on very high incomes will prevent the stated tax rate from being eviscerated by these warriors for the wealthy.”

15 November 2012

Failed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on a call with his donors, via ABC’s The Note:

“We had 20 Republican debates, that was absolutely nuts, it opened us up to gaffes and to material that could be used against us in the general, and we were fighting these debates for a year, and the incumbent president just sat back and laughed.”

14 November 2012

During an interview with Politico, Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal admitted that the Republican Party is the party that panders to the rich:

“We've got to make sure that we are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, big anything. We cannot be, we must not be, the party that simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys.”

11 November 2012

During a rehash of why Republicans lost the election on Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough asked Conservative author David Frum “What was Mitt Romney’s message?”. Frum’s response was scathing and direct:

“Mitt Romney's message is, 'I am going to take away Medicare from everybody under 55. I'm going to cut Medicaid for everybody by about a third, and I'm going to do that in order to finance a giant tax cut for me and my friends, and the reason I'm doing that is because half of the country contribute nothing to our national endeavors.'”

06 November 2012

At a press conference today, New Jersey’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie pushed back on Republican criticism of his praise for President Obama in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy:

“So all this other noise, I think, is coming from know-nothing, disgruntled Romney staffers who, you know, don’t like the fact that I said nice things about the President of the United States.

Well, that’s too bad for them.”

“Know-nothing, disgruntled Romney staffers”….priceless.

Adding…I have no liking for Chris Christie, but I do appreciate the fact that he praised the president despite what he knew would be certain tantrumming from the right wing. I also like that Christie put himself out there and worked at helping his people after the storm.

05 November 2012

Paul Krugman on the history of FEMA’s effectiveness based on which party holds the presidency:

“Consider, in particular, the history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Under President George H. W. Bush, FEMA became a dumping ground for unqualified political hacks. Faced with a major test in the form of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the agency failed completely.

Then Bill Clinton came in, put FEMA under professional management, and saw the agency’s reputation restored.

Given this experience, you might have expected George W. Bush to preserve Mr. Clinton’s gains. But no: he appointed his campaign manager, Joe Allbaugh, to head the agency, and Mr. Allbaugh immediately signaled his intention both to devolve disaster relief to the state and local level and to downgrade the whole effort, declaring, “Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level.” After Mr. Allbaugh left for the private sector, he was replaced with Michael “heckuva job” Brown, and the rest is history.

Like Mr. Clinton, President Obama restored FEMA’s professionalism, effectiveness, and reputation. But would Mitt Romney destroy the agency again? Yes, he would. As everyone now knows — despite the Romney campaign’s efforts to Etch A Sketch the issue away — during the primary Mr. Romney used language almost identical to Mr. Allbaugh’s, declaring that disaster relief should be turned back to the states and to the private sector.”

03 November 2012

“In the past he has taken sensible positions on immigration, illegal guns, abortion rights and health care — but he has reversed course on all of them, and is even running against the very health care model he signed into law in Massachusetts.”

While that doesn’t even begin to describe the problems with Romney, I’ll take it.

01 November 2012

“He [Romney] ridiculed the president — ridiculed the president for his efforts to fight global warming in economically beneficial ways. He [Romney] said “Oh, you’re going to turn back the seas."

In my part of America [NYC], we would like it if someone could’ve done that yesterday.”

There is a 95% + consensus amongst climatologists that anthropogenic climate change is not only real, but stunningly dangerous to survival on planet Earth. And still, Big Oil--Fossil Fuels [thank you, Koch brothers] has sold America the idea that it doesn’t exist. And this industry has been criminally aided and abetted by Republicans.

31 October 2012

Ann Romney wants to get rid of teachers unions and public education. Seriously. These are the issues that she told Good Housekeeping magazine were “closest to her heart”, emphasis mine:

GH: Can you tell me, what campaign issue is closest to your heart?

AR: I've been a First Lady of the State. I have seen what happens to people's lives if they don't get a proper education. And we know the answers to that. The charter schools have provided the answers. The teachers' unions are preventing those things from happening, from bringing real change to our educational system. We need to throw out the system.

Republicans are big on privatizing public education for a very simple reason. They own, and/or are invested in charter schools, And they hate the unions.

If Ann Romney were to become the FLOTUS, it will be the first time in the history of this country that we’ve ever had a first lady who wanted to destroy our system of public education rather than enhance it.

What’s been happening in Wisconsin, Florida, and other states tells us just how much the Republicans want to tear down our system of education. In an article published by The Progressive magazine in 2011, Ruth Conniff on the Republican assault on public education:

Wisconsin is on the leading edge of a national assault on public education. Walker made a big name for himself with his explosive move to bust public employee unions and take away teachers’ bargaining rights. Now comes the next phase.

“We’ve been hearing about this for years now,” says Democratic state representative Sondy Pope-Roberts. “I see Wisconsin as the first domino in a line. As this falls, I see other states hoping to achieve our quote-unquote success . . . by crushing unions and taking public schools private.”

Wisconsin has long had a strong public school system. But the conservative Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee has also been a national incubator for vouchers and other school privatization efforts.

“We started by being the first state to have a voucher school, in Milwaukee,” Pope-Roberts says. “Now we will be the first state to . . . basically create charter school districts.”

Instead of being approved by local school boards, under S.B. 22 these charters would be overseen by a nine-member board appointed by the governor and leaders of the legislature.

The bill would encourage the rapid expansion of virtual charters, which would receive the same per-pupil tax dollars as bricks-and-mortar schools, and could enroll students all over the state.

Walker’s other proposals include lifting the income cap for vouchers, so wealthy families could receive public funds to send their kids to private schools.

Conniff believes that the war on education is motivated by a desire to “drown government in a bathtub”:

The war on public schools is part of the conservative dream to “get government down to the size where you can drown it in the bathtub,” as conservative guru Grover Norquist so memorably put it.

This is where we differ. If you follow the money behind the charter schools in various areas, you’ll see that they are owned by either Republicans or Republican think tanks. It is, in my opinion, primarily about the money.

Campaigning in Ohio, an outraged Joe Biden on the Romney Campaign’s ad claiming that Jeep was sending American jobs to China:

“I have seen more Romney ads about he's going to get tough on China. To use President Clinton's phrase, in another context, “that takes a lot of brass”.

Romney get tough on China? The same man the Washington Post said pioneered outsourcing? The same man who criticized the president of the United States for taking action against China and saving thousands of American jobs in steel and the rubber industry?

So when you hear Gov. Romney say he'd protect government jobs by getting tough on China, I got a word for you: malarkey. Absolute malarkey. Look, his saying he'll get tough on China is only out done by his bizarre claim about the auto industry,

Within two weeks he's [Romney] running an ad in this state saying that President Obama made the companies go bankrupt, gave the industry [to] the Italians, who are selling it to the Chinese.

I have never seen anything like that. It's an absolutely patently false assertion. It's such an outrageous assertion that [it’s] one of the few times in my memory Chrysler has felt obliged to go public saying Jeep has no intention of outsourcing production of their models out of America to China. Chrysler Corporation, which is highly unusual, said “a careful and unbiased reading would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments”. Have they no shame?

Romney will say anything, absolutely anything, to win this thing.”

You can view the Romney ad here. The rebuke to Romney by Chrysler is here. The shame felt by Romney at being caught in yet another big lie is …….well, non-existent.

29 October 2012

During the GOP primaries, when Romney was asked about disaster relief for recent tornado and flood victims, Mitt Romney said he’d like to see disaster relief privatized, and called such relief “immoral”. Watch:

Well, that’s pretty clear. Mr. Romney would like to see those of us who are not in the 1%, fend for ourselves. Disasters included.

26 October 2012

What do you think Paul Ryan's obsession with her work would mean if he were vice president?[OBAMA] Well, you'd have to ask Paul Ryan what that means to him. Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we'd pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we're only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we're considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that's a pretty narrow vision. It's not one that, I think, describes what's best in America. Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a "you're on your own" society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party.